As in any industry, there are occasions in the cigarette manufacturing industry when the finished product, cartons of cigarettes, are returned to the manufacturer or are not satisfactory for shipment by the manufacturer. For example, finished, packaged cigarettes may be returned as out of date due to failure to rotate stock, due to removal from the market, for example, in product trials, or due to damage. Generally, the tobacco in the cigarettes is of good quality and because of the high cost of tobacco, it is economically advantageous to recover the tobacco for the manufacture of new cigarettes.
The reclaiming of tobacco from the cigarettes requires, of course, first opening the cartons and packs and removing the cigarettes from those packaging materials. Removing the cigarettes from the packaging has heretofore been a manual operation requiring a large amount of labor carrying on a time-consuming task, and the manual operations resulted in the inclusion of paper and foil fragments mixed in with the cigarettes. It is evident that such a manual process was expensive and not very satisfactory in terms of the end result.